Big Data

The well-known three Vs of Big Data - Volume, Variety, and Velocity – are increasingly placing pressure on organizations that need to manage this data as well as extract value from this data deluge for Predictive Analytics and Decision-Making. Big Data technologies, services, and tools such as Hadoop, MapReduce, Hive and NoSQL/NewSQL databases and Data Integration techniques, In-Memory approaches, and Cloud technologies have emerged to help meet the challenges posed by the flood of Web, Social Media, Internet of Things (IoT) and machine-to-machine (M2M) data flowing into organizations.

Big Data Articles

The Independent Oracle Users Groups (IOUG) has been serving Oracle technologists and professionals for more than 20 years, and we are very pleased with how much the community has grown as well as how much IOUG has accomplished. Having said this, we will not rest on our laurels. There are many great opportunities that lie ahead of us. While we set the bar pretty high in 2014 with the establishment of the content-rich blog #IOUGenius, an increased number of Master Classes offered across the nation and a truly inspirational COLLABORATE 14, you'll be very pleased with what IOUG has in store for 2015.

COLLABORATE 15 - Technology and Applications Forum for the Oracle Community (hashtag #C15LV) is back in Las Vegas April 12-16, 2015 at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, offering a wide variety of education and valuable opportunities for collaboration among peers. The more than 1250 planned education sessions in 17 tracks were sourced through the user communities of IOUG, OAUG and Quest and selected through a competitive process. The result is an agenda packed with relevant insights for functional as well as technical users, beginner to advanced.

COLLABORATE is the single event that delivers the full range of Oracle applications and technology from three independent Oracle users groups. This year, COLLABORATE 15: Technology and Applications Forum will provide the Oracle Community with more than 1,000 sessions and panels covering first-hand experiences, case studies, how-to content, news and information from Oracle executive management, opportunities for networking, SIG meetings, a Women in Technology Forum, and an exhibitor showcase highlighting products and solutions that can help solve real-world challenges.

MemSQL, a provider of real-time databases for transactions and analytics, has added geospatial capabilities for its in-memory, distributed, SQL-based database. By bringing together geospatial and operational data in the same database, the goal is to help organizations improve agility for their geospatial analysis.

Violin Memory, Inc., which offers flash storage platform solutions for primary storage and active workloads, is launching a Global Partner Program and a new simplified online portal. The expanded Violin Global Partner Program will establish incentives and business models that will help organizations to achieve success through simplified partner programs, more predictable performance rewards, and tools to deliver consistency in partner engagement.

SoftLayer will offer OpenPOWER-based servers as part of its portfolio of cloud-based services. With the new offering, clients will be able to select OpenPOWER-based "bare-metal" servers when configuring their cloud-based IT infrastructure from SoftLayer, an IBM company.

SOA Software, a provider of API Management, service-oriented architecture governance and cloud integration solutions, is changing its name to Akana. "Enterprises today need a ‘digital glue' to securely extend their data to their ecosystem, build efficient partner networks and digital value-chains, and extract intelligent insights into their business through analytics," said Paul Gigg, CEO of Akana. "Akana remains committed to providing innovative and flexible solutions to address the continuously evolving needs of both our customers and the market as a whole."

SUSE has introduced the latest version of its OpenStack distribution for building Infrastructure-as-a-Service private clouds. Formerly called SUSE Cloud, SUSE OpenStack Cloud 5 is based on the latest OpenStack release (Juno) and provides increased networking flexibility and improved operational efficiency to simplify private cloud infrastructure management.

IBM is promoting the use of data streaming in from building systems to better manage energy consumption. The company recently announced a new smarter buildings partnership with Carnegie Mellon University, which is using a new cloud-based analytics system to save approximately 10% on utilities, nearly $2 million annually across 36 buildings on its Pittsburgh campus.

1010data, Inc, a big data discovery platform that combines a complete analytical platform with clients, is partnering with R to release R1010, a new R package that integrates directly with 1010data's platform. "R is a very popular programming language that allows analysts to do statistical analysis and modeling," said Sandy Steier, CEO and co-founder of 1010data. "It's open source, which means it's free which certainly explains part of its popularity but it's clearly effective and usable. It's a good way for our customers to analyze data in conjunction with 1010data."

As information technology has improved, one thing that has grown exponentially over the past few years has been data. The variety of data sources can also present security issues as well. To address these concerns, AtomicDB is proposing an associative-based system, which, it says, is more secure and productive.

Paxata is partnering with Carahsoft Technology Corp, a government IT solutions provider, to bring the Paxata Adaptive Data Preparation application and platform to government agencies to help them automate, collaborate and govern data integration, data quality and the enrichment process. "Paxata fills a critical technology gap between the industry-leading data management capabilities provided by Cloudera and innovative data visualization functionality pioneered by Tableau," said Michael Shrader, vice president, Intelligence and Innovative Solutions, at Carahsoft.

It looks like 2015 will be an important year for big data and many other technologies such as HTAP and in-memory computing. Many businesses have gone from investigation to experimentation to actual implementation. With installations coming online, and more to come in 2015 and beyond, big data will become more efficient and more customer-focused. Essentially, what many saw as hype will now turn into real implementations.

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technology allows users to engage with large, relational datasets in a map format. GIS adds another dimension of understanding to traditional databases through its emphasis on location. This technology significantly enhances business intelligence in three key ways.

Rocket Software, a global software development firm, has released UniData 8.1, which represents the largest release in terms of number of enhanced features in 10 years to the MultiValue database management system. UniData's innovative features help organizations in hundreds of industries improve their ability to manage massive amounts of data by delivering fast response times.

Ryft has unveiled the Ryft ONE, a commercial 1U platform designed to enable faster business insights by simultaneously analyzing up to 48 terabytes of historical and streaming data at 10 gigabytes/second or faster. The Ryft ONE will be available in early Q2 2015, as a hosted or on-premises solution, and the Ryft Early Access Program is now accepting applications.

To educate its readers about the key technologies and strategies for a successful analytics program today, Database Trends and Applications is hosting a webcast on March 12, "The Top Trends in Analytics for 2015."

The Internet of Things (IoT) will generate more data than ever before possible for businesses. Many recent factors have contributed to the IoT becoming a reality: widespread broadband, new narrowband options, smaller and cheaper sensors, new machine connectivity, the emergence of big data, and Apache Hadoop. As a result, companies are beginning to explore whether their infrastructure will be able to handle the capture and processing of this data deluge.

Hadoop distribution provider MapR Technologies has announced the results of testing based on the recently released benchmark for big data technologies from TPC (Transaction Processing Performance Council). The recently released TPCx-HS benchmark for big data technologies is a series of tests that compare Hadoop architectures across several dimensions. Cisco is also now reselling the MapR Distribution with Cisco UCS, as part of an agreement that includes marketing, sales and training worldwide.

"This acquisition is strategic, synergistic, and will strengthen our leadership in the big data and Hadoop market," said Shimon Alon, Attunity's chairman and CEO, during a conference call this morning discussing his company's purchase of Appfluent, a provider of data usage analytics for big data environments, including data warehousing and Hadoop. "We also expect it to accelerate our revenue growth and to be accretive to earnings." The total purchase price is approximately $18 million, payable in cash and stock, with additional earn-out consideration based on performance milestones.

IBM has acquired AlchemyAPI, a Denver-based provider of cognitive computing application program interface (API) services and deep learning technology. The goal IBM says is to improve the development of next generation cognitive computing applications. IBM says the acquisition also expands the Watson ecosystem, with the addition of 40,000 developers to the IBM Watson developer community. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed

Software-defined technologies and software-defined data centers (SDDCs) are generating significant traction in the IT community, and many organizations recognize the potential operational benefits to be had by software-defining their own IT infrastructure. What most do not realize, however, is that SDDC is not achieved by simply bolting together virtualization, software-defined networking (SDN), and software-defined storage (SDS).

Whether an organization is currently considering Hadoop or already using it in production, Hadoop Day on May 12 will provide the opportunity to connect with experts and advance your knowledge base. The educational event will include wide range of presentations focused on topics such as the current state of Hadoop and how to get started, best practices for building a data warehouse on Hadoop that co-exists with other frameworks and non-Hadoop platforms, leveraging Hadoop in the cloud, the key components of the Hadoop ecosystem, as well as a spirited panel discussion on what to consider before diving into the data lake.

Informatica, a data management company, is collaborating with two major big data players - Capgemini and Pivotal - on a data lake solution. As part of the Business Data Lake ecosystem developed by Capgemini and Pivotal, Informatica will deliver certified technologies for data integration, data quality and master data management (MDM).

MongoDB has announced the general availability of MongoDB 3.0 which introduces a flexible storage architecture incorporating the WiredTiger storage engine, acquired in 2014. With the new release of MongoDB, the company has also rolled out MongoDB Ops Manager for managing MongoDB deployments.

To provide information about the emerging best practices and key technology solutions to this challenge, Database Trends and Applications is hosting a special roundtable webcast on Thursday, March 5, at 11 am PT/ 2 pm ET, titled, "Data Engineering for the Internet of Things."

New technologies such as Hadoop provide enterprises with another option besides the enterprise data warehouse when it comes to their data storage. Nonetheless, data warehouses still provide value to companies. What you need to know is when to use your data warehouse, when to use Hadoop, the advantage of using both in your information supply system, and the key strategies for success. These issues were examined in a recent DBTA roundtable webcast, featuring Kevin Petrie, senior director, Attunity; George Corugedo, CTO and co-founder, RedPoint Global Inc.; and Nitin Bandugula, senior product marketing manager, MapR, that is now available for replay.

Xplenty has formed a partnership with Avlino, a big data solutions provider, to further accelerate batch processing within Xplenty's software. With the new partnership, Xplenty and Avlino say they want to reverse a commonly accepted industry statistic concerning data processing - that it takes business users 80% of the time to prepare data, allowing them only 20% of the time to actually analyze it.

What is the best product or solution for storing, protecting, integrating, enhancing, or analyzing data? It depends on who you ask. To shine a spotlight on the best information management solutions in the marketplace, Database Trends and Applications has launched the 2015 DBTA Readers' Choice Awards, a program in which the winners will be selected by the experts whose opinions count above all others - you.

Syncsort, a provider of big data and mainframe software, has completed the acquisition of UK-based William Data Systems, a provider of advanced network monitoring and security software products for the IBM z Systems z/OS mainframe platform. According to Syncsort, because the mainframe is a high-volume transactional supercomputer, the networking and security data collected by the William Data product suite is particularly valuable to fast-growing big data and analytical platforms.

InterSystems, a provider of data management technologies, has introduced a new release of its SQL/NoSQL platform Caché, which doubles the scalability of prior releases, based on independent third-party testing.

Early bird registration is now available for Data Summit 2015, which will take place Monday, May 11, through Wednesday, May 13, at the New York Hilton Midtown. Register now to take advantage of the early bird rates.

Enterprise data security has become not only a major focus of attention in the tech industry, but has also become a concern for the mainstream public. With the steady stream of data breaches at companies such as the retail giant Target, the tech and media leader Sony, and most recently medical insurer Anthem, Inc., many organizations are now beginning to appreciate the importance of data security and just how much a financial toll a hack can cause. According to many executives, a turning point has been reached.

Hadoop has continued its growth and become part of the consciousness of decision makers dealing with big data. However, Hadoop is a still too advanced for the typical business user to work with. To help make it easier, Oracle has created Big Data Discovery, a product that aims to help simplify Hadoop for the average business user.

SAP and the National Hockey League (NHL) have announced a multi-year partnership. To start, SAP and the NHL are focusing on increasing fan engagement and deepening fan loyalty with the newly released statistics platform on NHL.com powered by the SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud service.

Early bird pricing has been extended to February 28 for ISUG-TECH's 2015 conference taking place March 29-April 2 at the Hilton Atlanta in Atlanta, Georgia. "This conference provides a unique opportunity for attendees to take advantage of some really in-depth training that they don't typically get exposure to - especially when you talk about ASE, IQ, PowerBuilder, PowerDesigner, and HANA. The folks that are putting on the training sessions for us are the most senior product engineers," said Bryan Enochs, acting president at ISUG-TECH.

SAP has announced SAP Business Suite 4 SAP HANA (SAP S/4HANA). The new product is built on the in-memory platform SAP HANA and is designed leveraging the SAP Fiori user experience (UX) for mobile devices. The announcement was made at a launch event at the New York Stock Exchange.

Kore Technologies, a provider of solutions for enterprise integration, data warehousing, business intelligence, and e-commerce solutions, is making available a replay of a webinar for the Eclipse Users Group, an independent organization of distribution companies which use the Epicor Eclipse software. Separately, Kore will also be presenting "Using SQL Integration to Improve Enrollment Reporting" at the Community College Conference in Monterey, CA, on March 9.

There are always new buzzwords coming along. But whether you call it "SMAC" or "CAMS," there is no doubt that today the confluence of trends—analytics, cloud, social, and mobile—is proving to be a disruptive force that is causing many to reassess their approaches to data management. Over the years, MultiValue technologies have evolved and adapted, pushing boundaries in order to integrate with new data sources and targets, address new analytics needs, and keep pace with emerging requirements. This has enabled customers to continue to rely on their trusted, and often highly specialized, MultiValue applications and data management systems.

The "Internet of Things" (IoT) is opening up a new world of data interchange between devices, sensors, and applications, enabling businesses to monitor, in real time, the health and performance of products long after they leave the production premises. At the same time, enterprises now have access to valuable data—again, in real time if desired—on how customers are adopting products and services.

Sqrrl, a big data analytics company that develops software to uncover hidden patterns, trends, and links in data, has announced the launch of Sqrrl Enterprise 2.0 coinciding with receiving $7 million in new funding. Sqrrl was developed by former employees of the NSA. "We don't shy away from our NSA heritage, we see it as a strength," stated Ely Kahn, co-founder and director of business development for Sqrrl.